Friday, January 22, 2016

Fixing a Metal Stool

My next project for my Machines and Tools class was to design a structure for a metal stool that will make it withstand properly and more durable.

I wasn't able to get a personal picture. But this is the exact model of the chair.

(I got this picture from schooloutfitters.com)

Question: What was the problems with the chair?

Kelly: After a while, the chair was becoming wobbly and the legs were beginning to detach from the plate of the stool.

Question: What was the first thing you did to fix it?

Kelly: First thing that my group partners and I did was to make out the design of we were going to do. In this case, we came up with the idea of making four 9x1.5 inch pieces of aluminum and either weld or rivet the pieces into the plate of the stool.

Question: Were there any steps you had to take beforehand?

Kelly: Yes of course! Since the legs of the stool were almost coming out completely, my group decided to take out the legs by using a cut off tool instead of just pulling it out and damaging the legs even more.

Question: Did you do anything else?

Kelly: Yes. My group had to take all of the rust and paint off of the legs by using sand paper. Otherwise, the legs wouldn't properly attach to the plate of the stool when we welded them back together.

Question: Wow! How long did that take you guys to sand?

Kelly: It took us quite a while seeing as how I tend to be a bit of a perfectionist and wanted to get rid of all the paint and rust from every nook and cranny of the legs.

Question: How about the plate?

Kelly: With the plate, we knew it would take too long to clean out the whole thing. So instead we just a sandblaster to clean out all the paint and rust. To my surprise, it did a job well done cleaning the plate quickly seeing as how it was my first time using the machine